


The Five Times Tybalt Got Stuck Up A Tree

by orphan_account



Category: Romeo And Juliet - All Media Types, Romeo And Juliet - Shakespeare
Genre: Family, Gen, Trees
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-10
Updated: 2015-08-10
Packaged: 2018-04-14 00:12:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4542834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cats aren't supposed to climb trees; by the fifth time, it's a wonder that anyone bothers trying to get him down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Five Times Tybalt Got Stuck Up A Tree

**1.**

“Tybalt! Come down!” 

Stranded at least fifteen feet above the ground and clinging to the branch he was perched on for dear life, the little boy frantically shook his head. Below, the small congregation of Capulets that had gathered ever since the Nurse caught sight of the four year old boy up in the tree gathered round the tree, ready to catch the tot should he fall. 

“He doesn’t know how to come down,” Tybalt’s father sighed, turning to Lady Capulet with a wince. “He’s _afraid_.”

“He has nothing to be afraid of,” the svelte blonde woman replied firmly before cupping her hands around her mouth and again calling out, “Tybalt! It’s alright, just try to climb down from the tree!”

“How did he even get up there?” someone asked, and everyone seemed to pause for a second to contemplate this all-too-valid question, before the little boy gave another shout from up in the tree.

“That’s it,” Tybalt’s father announced, rolling up his sleeves. He caught hold of the first branch easily, and in no time at all was pulling himself up the tree towards his son.

The child’s tear-lined face broke into a relieved grin when he caught sight of his father emerging from the masses of leaves below. “Daddy!” he exclaimed, holding his arms out and quickly managing to loop himself around his father’s neck. At this point, Tiberius Capulet made the mistake of looking down.

Actually, he decided as he descended from the tree as quickly as possible, gripping each branch until his knuckles were white, he really didn’t like trees that much either.

**2.**

Mercutio didn’t like Lady Capulet. She was too tall, for one thing, and as a very short child tall people were quite good at unnerving him; her boobs were too large, her waist was too small, her features were too sharp, her voice was too hard- overall, Mercutio found Tybalt’s aunt to be an extremely unpleasant woman indeed.

However, he’d never found her scarier than he did in that very moment- the moment he was forced to break it to her that he’d managed to get her nephew stuck up a tree. Her furious cry of, _“Again?!”_ was a bit baffling, but the way she glowered at him made her feelings crystal clear; as did the way she leaned down, very close to his face, and hissed in a frighteningly low voice, “And _how_ exactly did Tybalt get stuck up in a tree?”

“I- I-” He could barely force the words out; after a few hapless seconds of choking on his tongue, they spilled out in one breath. _“IsortofdaredhimtoclimbthetreeI’mreallyreallysorry.”_

They found Tybalt exactly where Mercutio had left him; stranded on the highest branch of one of the tallest trees in the yard, white-faced and staring down at the ground from all the way up. Lady Capulet took one look at her nephew suspended at least thirty feet in the air, blinked a few times, and then let out a heavy sigh.

“Does anyone have a ladder?”

**3.**

He thought he had seen a cat; this was his explanation the third time, and by this point no one was willing to climb up and help him. “Be a man,” his father had called up to him before strolling away, disappointment clear in his posture and the way he shook his head, as if he couldn’t believe his twelve year old son’s idiocy. Lady Capulet, too, was fed up; she stood under the tree and stared up at Tybalt for a very long time with pursed lips before following after his brother. Even the servants seemed unwilling to help, or else they had been forbidden; they strolled around as if they didn’t even notice the boy yelling from up in the tree at all.

It seemed everyone was intent on letting Tybalt stay up in the tree until he came down himself. The only problem? _He wasn’t going to come down_ ; and as the day wore on, it seemed indeed as if he’d wind up sleeping high above the ground tonight.

Relief for Tybalt when finally his ears caught the sound of branches cracking and bending below him quickly turned to alarm when he realized exactly _who_ was climbing the tree after him. “Hey!” he called out, his voice laced with panic. “Juliet! Stop! Don’t come up here!”

“I’m coming to save you, Tybalt!” his younger cousin called from not-so-far below his perch, where she clung precariously to a branch while balancing her toes on the one below her. When she spotted her cousin looking down, she gave him a bright grin through her curtain of chestnut hair. It was too much for Tybalt, who had to quickly turn away; he found himself convinced that his cousin was about to die for his sake.

By the time Juliet finally reached her cousin, she was alarmed to find that he was trembling. “Tyb?” she tilted her head, cautiously scaling the branch to reach his side. When she lay a hand on his shoulder, he cringed away. “What is it? You don’t need to be scared; I’m here now.”

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Tybalt muttered through gritted teeth. “Dangerous.”

“But I’m okay!” exclaimed Juliet brightly, her smile quickly morphing into a frown when she realized that her cousin didn’t seem to share her enthusiasm. “Tybalt…” Leaning in close, she placed a hand on his arm once more, and this time she was relieved to find that he didn’t pull away from her. 

“It’s okay to be scared. Don’t feel bad. I get scared too… I’m scared of the dark sometimes, and I don’t like dead things, or ghosts, or bugs, or too many people, or-” She cut herself off, giggling slightly; the sight very nearly made Tybalt able to crack a smile as well. “But that’s okay. When you’re around other people, though, I think you have to show them how brave you can be so they know that even though you’re scared you can be brave too- but you don’t have to worry about that. Everybody knows how brave you are.”

Tybalt watched her out of the corner of his eye for a long moment; Juliet’s face was the picture of honesty, the smile that played on her lips gently teasing her cousin with it’s genuine affection. Slowly, ever so slowly, he was able to turn and face her fully.

“Juliet, I’m going to focus on you,” he said slowly, “and I think we can climb down the tree together”

Juliet grinned.

**4.**

“I can’t believe this happened again.”

“I can’t believe I’m stuck up here too.”

Tybalt frowned, glaring over his shoulder at his cousin before hugging the tree branch tighter. “Why on earth are you climbing trees at one in the morning?”

“I told you,” hissed Juliet, shivering slightly in her thin pink t-shirt; half of her hair had fallen out of its braid and was now flying haphazardly about her head, but neither Capulet was willing to reach out and fix it. “I wanted to see you again! I hardly get to talk to you at all anymore- you know that Mother always says, _'as an eleven year old girl you need to stop hanging around Tybalt all the time and begin learning ‘social etiquette’."_ She pulled a pout, her legs swinging on both sides of the branch she sat on. “I don’t want to learn ‘social etiquette’, I want to fight like you! I want to be allowed to see you!”

Tybalt frowned, his cousin’s words striking a chord within him; he’d felt the exact same way, hearing that he should give Juliet some space to _“grow as a woman”_ , as his father put it. “Well,” he replied stiffly, doing his best not to think about just how far away from the ground they were. “You have plenty of time to see me right now, considering we’re stuck in a blasted tree.”

“You shouldn’t say that, Tyb, that isn’t nice,” Juliet scolded gently, before sighing. “It was nice of you to climb out your window to save me after I got frightened, though. I didn’t think this tree was so much higher than the last one… Too bad your window locked behind you and now we’re both stuck- but as long as you’re here it isn’t as scary!”

The thought that he was doing something to assuage his cousin’s fears made Tybalt feel proud; he let out a huff, refusing to agree with or try to counter Juliet’s praise. It would be a long time before anyone found them up here. “So,” he ventured after a few silent moments. “You… really want to learn how to fight like me?”

**5.**

“Tybalt!” Juliet called, bouncing up and down on the ground as she peered up through the branches at her stranded cousin. “Can’t you just climb down?”

“If I could climb down,” the black-clad teenager called back crossly, “I think I would have done so by now, don’t you?”

Next to Juliet, Mercutio let out a whistle. “After all this time,” he remarked, and both Romeo and Benvolio nodded in awed agreement. Rosaline had her arms crossed, and was looking more than unimpressed; the cat that had been the reason Tybalt had chosen to mount the tree in the first place had long since jumped down and scrambled off, having left Tybalt and his two cousins in quite a jam before the prince’s nephew and his Montague friends had come strolling through the park and decided to “help”.

Tybalt would have called what they were doing gawking, honestly, but Tybalt was the one stuck up a tree, so no one was asking him.

“Some people never change,” Rosaline remarked with a sigh. 

"Some cats don't handle trees well," Mercutio added wryly, and at his side his two friend snickered. Juliet shook her head, wincing up at her stranded cousin.

“I don’t think you realize exactly how many times this has happened.”

“I realize,” spoke up Mercutio. “I was there for one of them.”

“I realize too!” called the Capulet up a tree. “I definitely realize! And I definitely still don’t like heights, so will one of you kindly get me down?”

Benvolio turned to the rest of the group, raising an eyebrow. “We’re going to help him, right?”

“We… _could_ ,” Mercutio said slowly, blinking thoughtfully. “Or…”

“We could just leave him there,” Romeo finished, and the three boys exchanged wicked grins. “How about it?” he continued, offering Juliet one arm and Rosaline the other. “Do you ladies feel like getting some frozen yogurt from the shop down the street?”

“Hmm.” Juliet pretended to consider the notion for a moment, exchanging a glance with her red haired cousin. The girls grinned at each other, and then back at the boys. “We would be delighted, sirs,” she replied primly, latching onto Romeo’s side. Up in the tree, the group could hear Tybalt protesting loudly; they only snickered as they continued merrily on their way down the path, leaving the poor Capulet scion stranded.

“Romeo! Montague, don’t you dare steal my cousins, don’t you- _Mercutio!_ Benvolio! Where do you think you’re going? You can’t leave me up here, you can’t- hey!” No one was listening to Tybalt. The teen glowered, resting his chin on a nearby branch. “I hate you all,” he muttered darkly. And he _really_ hated trees.


End file.
